We’ve already come across people using AI to pose as dead artists in hope of picking up Spotify plays; essentially piggybacking on established artists for financial gain. Now it seems that the nefarious individuals who do this sort of thing are targeting artists who are very much alive.
A BBC article has spotlighted Emily Portman, a Sheffield-based folk singer who has released a new album, Orca, recently. Except it isn’t hers at all. Portman was only alerted to it when a fan messaged her saying: “English folk is in good hands”.
Featuring tracks with names like ‘Sprig Of Thyme’ and ‘Silent Hearth’ – titles close to existing tracks of hers, the AI had clearly been trained on her music. But of course it was too perfect: “vacuous and pristine,” in her words. She said: “I'll never be able to sing that perfectly in tune. And that's not the point. I don't want to. I'm human."
New York-based singer songwriter Josh Kaufman is another who’s been targeted by these AI grifters. "I just started getting messages from fans and friends about some new music I just released, and how much of a shift it was(stylistically)," he says.
"I think most people were hip to the fact that it was somebody else just using my artist profile as a way to release some strange music that clearly was computer generated." In his case, his impersonator clearly didn’t do a very good job.
One of the ‘songs’, Someone Who's Love Me (note the ungrammatical title) apparently sounded like: "a Casio keyboard demo with broken English lyrics".
The people behind these tracks seem to targeting folk or Americana artists in particular – Father John Misty, Iron And Wine and Jeff Tweedy of Wilco have had to take down fake tracks in recent months.
Presumably, the fraudsters behind these are under the impression that smaller artists won’t so easily notice, or even that they’d be grateful for the exposure.
So what are the streaming platforms doing about this? Well, Portman told the BBC that whilst “some” removed Orca quickly, it took Spotify three weeks to rectify her artist page.
In a statement, the platform said: "These albums were incorrectly added to the wrong profile of a different artist by the same name, and were removed once flagged."
In the meantime, Portman is recording a real new album – her first for ten years. Unlike Orca it will take time, money and personal creativity. It won’t be perfect, but at least it will be real. And human.
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